We All Like to Reblog

June 1, 2010

Andy Peatling

Have you ever come across a blog post that you enjoyed so much you wanted to easily share it with the readers of your own blog? Sure, you can copy and paste the link and perhaps even a snippet of text with your own comments, but overall it’s not a particularly enjoyable experience. We wanted to change this and make sharing other posts with your readers as easy as posting to your blog.

Today we’re introducing a new like and reblog feature enabled across the whole of WordPress.com. When you’re logged in to WordPress.com and viewing a post you’ll notice a new link in the admin bar at the top of the page. If you really enjoyed the post then you can click the “Like” link to signify this. This will then show the author how many readers liked the post.

Once you’ve liked the post, the link will change to “You like this” and you’ll be presented with some new options via a drop down menu. You can also access this menu at any time in the future by hovering over the “You like this” link in the same way other menu items work.

When you reblog a post the details are auto populated on the QuickPress form.

If you decide that you want to share the post with your own readers, you can click the “Reblog this post” link and you’ll be taken to the new QuickPress tab on the WordPress.com home page. This will auto-fill a snippet of the post text, a link back to the original post, and a link to the blog. If the post includes any images we’ll also automatically add a thumbnail image to the reblog post. Finally you can add your own comments to the reblog post then select which blog you’d like to post it to (if you have more than one).

Even if you are not going to reblog a post you can use the QuickPress tab as a centralized and easy way to post to any of your blogs across WordPress.com.

Posts I Like

Alongside the new QuickPress tab you’ll also notice there is a “Posts I Like” tab. This will aggregate all of the posts that you have liked across any WordPress.com blog.

Browse all the posts you like with full post display and a handy search tool.

Instead of this just being a list of post titles, we fetch the whole post content along with any media so that you can use this tab as a place to browse any of the posts you like at a later date.

There’s also a handy search tool that will allow you to easily find that awesome post you want to reblog, but it’s just been a little too long to wade through all the other great posts you’ve liked since. Once you’ve found the post you can reblog it simply by hitting the “Reblog Post” button.

All these features are now live and ready to be used (maybe you’ve already noticed the “Like” link for this post?) so go forth and start liking and reblogging, we hope you find it useful.

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So if someone chooses to “Like” your article, the entire article gets republished in their “Like” list, right?

If that’s right, how does that saved copy affect readership stats and commenting on the originating blog? If the Liked article is re-read four times — are those re-reads counted or is only the first pull counted?

Are the saved “Likers” able to comment on your saved article from their Like area?

not all posts I want to repost (reblog?) are those which I like.. Most of the time I simply want more people to know about it regardless I like it or not. Is there a way to repost a post without having me to like it first?

I do like the like feature, although the reblog seems to be an attempt at becoming “Tumblr 2.0” (which I also use).

One quick question: If someone does reblog a post with a video (say VideoPress), does the reblog include a thumbnail or quick snapshot of the video, or does it just capture the text? If it captures the video (albeit via smaller size), is there a way to choose the thumbnail if we are using VideoPress?

There’s no opt-out as it stands, but allowing others to reblog your posts will ultimately bring more people in to read your blog. If you’re concerned then you can still make a post private, or your entire blog private.

Is there something wrong with the Freshly Pressed Subscriber button? It won’t load:-((
Anyhow, WP is getting awesome each day. I migrate from another blog platform to here, because of some great reasons. And I never regret doing it
Keep the good work.
I will tell you when I faint hearing and using your awesome features.
Lulu

Thumbs down. You are treating your registered bloggers as your customers by forgetting the customers of the bloggers themselves (their visitors). This exclusive company wide Like feature is going to add more confusion for the people amid all other Like buttons everywhere. it would have been better if you had not fallen for this trend which is evolving people on the internet backwards. Now, what is next, a ping.fm for all these separate Like buttons and then ultimately they will show up under plethora of AddThis html code? Where is the innovation? Amazing!

Thanks for holding back with Facebook. Even though I have an account there, I’m not keen on it, specially with their “sharing of information” policies. I find it cumbersome to get any message across with their interfaces.

I assume the decision not to allow opt has been made with legal consultation. An alternative to making our blogs private is to can movethem off any platform platform that advocates and provides tools for breach of copyright.

I’m seeing a lot of comments about a Facebook Like feature and personally I’m opposed—not everyone uses Facebook, and not everyone wants to see it turning up through a completely different medium. When did blogging become social networking?

I’m sorry, this feature is nice and all…but can’t we just call it “reblog”. All these ‘like’ buttons are getting on my nerves. FaceBook just had to go overboard and turn fanpaging into ‘liking’ and then YouTube picked up the idea and changed their perfectly good five-star rating system into a ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ system. Whether or not liking has the same effect on WordPress doesn’t matter…this trend is repetitive and too market-y for my tastes. Not only that, but I agree with others that reblogging someone’s content should be an opt-in feature, not mandatory.

It doesn’t affect me because I don’t blog about anything serious enough, but I know some people are particularly wary of plagiarism and breach of copyright.
An “Opt Out” of the ability for people to simply “Reblog” posts, either at Post or Blog level, should have been inherent in the design brief, as should the default status for that… “Opt Out”

Working hand in hand between blogs. This new feature is remarkable WP. Keep it up.

Btw, I thought this page shouldn’t be used for queries (mine in one post was not approved because I did), yet I’m seeing a few earlier comments here with questions. I hope everyone’s fair enough. Thanks.

Interesting. I just finished reading this week’s TIME Magazine expose entitled “FACEBOOK and How It’s Redefining Privacy” – a must-read article which details in greater clarity the extensive and unrelenting profiling Facebook uses to make billions of dollars off of its unsuspecting users. Most recently facebook has employed the “Like” trend – tracking user activity, logging personal preferences, and building an extensive profile on each one of us for self-serving marketing purposes. Perhaps you can imagine my surprize and unease today to see WP’s new “Like” feature introduced.

I do not know enough yet about this launch to openly support or oppose it, however I am seeing plenty of red flags here – and I am disconcerted that WP may feel the lure of the Billion Dollar Facebook bandwagon too hard to resist. Is WP hoping to find a way to cash in on our “Likes” in the future? I hope this is not the case. At any rate, choosing to use the “LIKE” term is unfortunate in today’s growing distrust of Facebook’s squirlley practices.

I appreciate the idea of being able to share other WP blog posts easily. This is a great feature! However,
1. I do not understand why we have to actually cast a personal vote to “like” a post in order to share it. Why can’t we just click a “share” button?
2. I do not see a reason why an archive is being built for each user that will include the entire post. This seems contradictory to the entire goal of encouraging increased traffic to return to read a post at its home source. Allowing someone to keep a copy of our entire post will actually eliminate the need for a reader to ever return to the blog in question, thus reducing the post stats, and blog’s stats in general. It also raises plagerism concerns.

Giving us a “Share” button, and creating an archive with a summary and a link back to the original post is appropriate and more than sufficient. Anything other than that risks infringing on Blogger Rights.

A couple of things: It is impossible from preventing someone from reblogging your posts, whether there’s a feature to make it easier or not. You posts can be aggregated and republished with RSS scrapers. Your posts can be copied and pasted. Unless you maintain a Copyscape subscription and use it regularly, not only can you not prevent it, you may not even know about it. The new feature makes it easier, at least for other WordPress.com bloggers, to share your posts, but it also helps guarantee you will be properly attributed, and that use of your material will fall under “fair use.” In a very real way, it discourages blatant plagiarism. I’m not trying to argue against an opt-out feature, just presenting a couple of things to think about (if you haven’t thought of them yourself already).

Also, as someone mentioned upstream, it would be very useful to have stats on this. I’d like to see how many times my posts have been “liked” (and, potentially, by whom), which apparently you can’t do in any way other than surfing all the individual posts on your own blog and checking the WP toolbar. it would be great to have this wrapped into Blog Stats. Not only would it be a useful statistic for me, but it might help me find other blogs that I would enjoy. (If they like my posts, I might like theirs, too)

I agree that taking a blog post without the author’s permission is going to happen regardless of this new added feature. Just like taking pictures that are published on someones blog (be careful of what you don’t want to share!) If you blog and it’s open to the public, it’s free for the taking. It’s just the way it is.

It’s pretty much share and share alike and you just have to consider it a compliment that they want to spread your words around.

I’ve seen people include a personal note about , “Please do not C/P this ” and I always wonder if consideration is given to that.

I agree with some above that ‘Like’ isn’t always the most appropriate term. Don’t wordpress.com bloggers ever debate or disagree with each other? There are plenty of other things you can do with a post which don’t imply a value judgement: note, add, remember, record, bookmark, share… Now is really not the best time to start copying Facebook.

It would be cool to have a page that aggregates the liked posts. Something similar to Digg. Or a public profile page that shows your liked posts so that you can share it with other. … I guess reblogging it would work as well, but some blog posts that I like I don’t necessarily want to re-blog.

This is STELLAR!!!
I just wonder if anyone is going to “like” my posts that much to repost it on their site…(mulling this over). My parents recently boycotted my blog and articles on other sites because they thought my writing was too edgy! Fortunately their nasty comments backfired and I am getting more traffic…(at least in the past couple of days).

i will join my vote to those requesting an opt-out option, if not for the “like” feature then et least for the reblog feature. if i wanted a blog for promiscuous reblogging i’d be using tumblr (actually, i do use tumblr exactly for that).

and please, if you do connect to facebook’s “like” feature, please set the default to disable.